From the Tom Woods Letter:
I lost some subscribers yesterday, which I expected. But I’m still here and all is well.
One person accused me of a “double standard” because all lobbying groups pursue their interests. So why was I singling out AIPAC?
How about because AIPAC smeared the most principled and courageous U.S. congressman we have? Is that answer sufficient for the police?
I wouldn’t say there’s exactly been a shortage of criticisms of other lobbying groups — the military-industrial complex gets its share of attention, I’d say — in my writing.
Again, imagine creating an organization aimed entirely at enriching a foreign country at the expense of the one in which you live, and then throwing career-destroying smears around at people who decline to comply. You cannot imagine that, thank goodness, because you’re not motivated by narcissistic self-preoccupation.
I have heard and I understand the reasons people have for supporting the Israeli regime.
My points are these:
(1) It is not reasonable to describe the Israeli government as our “greatest ally.” If you thought silly platitudes that are supposed to become true through repetition were confined to the left, think again. This particular one is a favorite of Conservatism, Inc. The “special relationship” with Israel confers no benefit on the U.S. How could it? What can a country of 9 million, half a world a way, do for us?
What it has done is made enemies that the U.S. would not otherwise have had.
Yes, I have heard the arguments: the Muslim world would have hated us no matter what we did, etc. I don’t buy it. At the time of the King-Crane Commission, the United States had an excellent reputation in the Middle East. When asked what country they’d like to govern them as League of Nations mandates, Middle Easterners overwhelmingly said the United States. That’s so inconceivable today that I wouldn’t blame you for not believing me.
The Truman State Department warned in the late 1940s that the U.S. would squander this good will via President Truman’s bias toward Israel (which Truman told Clark Clifford was dictated largely by domestic political considerations). The U.S., they said, would share the blame for whatever Israel did (and indeed Truman was evidently appalled at how Israel handled the refugee situation).
You will not run across anyone in official conservatism telling you this. Their salaries depend on not telling you.
(2) Christians may have their own secular reasons for wishing to lend support to the Israeli government, but they are under no theological obligation to do so.
The crazy eschatology according to which the return of the Jewish people to a particular physical land is necessary to usher in Christ’s return (and ultimately the end of the world), and which says seven years of unspeakable tribulation will afflict all mankind except the true Christian believers who will be safely “raptured” away, is completely wrong.
Nobody had even heard of these ideas until the 1830s, which fact alone, throughout the history of Christendom, would have been viewed by everyone — Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike — as immediately disqualifying. A novelty of this magnitude and it hadn’t occurred to anyone for 1800 years?
I am devoting episode #2413 of the Tom Woods Show to this exact topic — so again, please consider adding the Tom Woods Show (which you can find on all the major platforms) to your daily commute.
Now at the same time, none of what I’ve written here commits me to a benign view of Islam. There’s no reason it would have to. And so here I alienate everyone else.
I almost feel stupid saying “Hamas is bad,” because this is like saying racism is bad or that I’m against cancer. But Hamas is evil and subscribes to a backward religion that in my opinion, when faithfully observed, wrecks societies (the religion of Western progressivism does the same, but in different ways).
I think Europe is not going to be happy with the results of its immigration policies, to put it delicately.
The American Founding Fathers, who of course long preceded the creation of Hamas, felt the same way, and I could share numerous quotations to that effect.
(Now in case I’m offending anyone — my readers are made of tough stuff and know that “being offended” is for sissies, but still — here’s a little story. There was a conference at which a Protestant pastor stood up and told a Catholic audience, “Catholicism is false” — and everyone applauded. Because finally we were being honest with each other, instead of drawing up lawyers’ agreements like the Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification that used equivocal language to make it seem as if we all agreed.)
With all this as background, I hope you’ll check out my conversation with Ron Paul Institute executive director Daniel McAdams. Several times I steelman the Israeli position, expressing what seem to me to be legitimate Israeli concerns, to see how Daniel will answer.
We then discuss what the best- and worst-case scenarios coming out of all this might be.
I’m not an expert. But if there’s an easy answer I don’t know what it would be.
Israel is a country of 9 million, surrounded by hundreds of millions of hostile or potentially hostile people. American support can accomplish only so much.
But Daniel has valuable insights.
Please check it out:
www.tomwoods.com/mcadams